High-Intent Content Marketing Strategy – ↑ROI for Your SaaS

At Quoleady we strive to bring not only traffic but actual leads to B2B SaaS companies via high-intent blog content.

We’ve tried different strategies for our clients and in this article, I want to talk about the strategy we found works the best – it’s a SaaS content marketing strategy focused on high-intent keywords.

Thanks to this strategy, we’ve helped dozens of clients generate leads via their B2B SaaS blogs. Some of the well-known SaaS companies we’ve worked with include Expandi, Pandadoc, GetVoip, Monday.com and many more.

If you have a question about a B2B SaaS content production and its best practices feel free to book a free consultation and we’ll be happy to help you.

We love sharing our experience and we often share B2B SaaS content marketing blog writing tips.

If you want to discover content marketing strategies that bring results, check out articles we’ve written on the best SaaS content strategies for:

• Zapier – 3 content marketing strategies that bring in leads for SaaS startups
• Search Engine Watch – 10 SaaS marketers share what’s NOT working in content marketing anymore
• HubSpot – How Our Main Competitor Helped Chanty Increase Leads by 10K

And keep reading this article to learn how to apply high intent content strategy to your SaaS business.

What is high-intent content?

Before I start talking about keyword research for SaaS, I want to cover something that isn’t talked about enough.

I mean the search intent that stands behind every word or phrase someone types on Google.

The goal of our SEO strategy is not just to find popular keywords, but also to discover what people that are typing that keyword want.

Do they just want to get informed about a particular topic?

Or are they ready to purchase?

High-intent content is content that targets people at the bottom of the marketing funnel that are ready to purchase.

SaaS marketing agencies know that the best way to target them is by ranking for high-intent keywords on Google and we’ll show you how to do so.

What are high-intent keywords?

High-intent keywords are keywords with potentially high conversion rates, meaning that people who google them often turn into your SaaS subscribers after reading the article.

There are different types of high-intent keywords, as I’ll later talk about in detail.

The quickest way to identify them would be to look for transactional queries that mention something about purchasing: pricing, reviews, alternatives, and so on.

Transactional keywords are showing you that the reader isn’t just looking around, but that they’re seriously considering buying a product.

The most common mistake I see is when digital marketers focus only on high-volume keywords, without taking the time to figure out the user intent behind that keyword.

At our SaaS SEO agency, when we do keyword research for our clients we strive to find the balance between:

• search intent
• search volume
• keyword difficulty

I usually recommend covering a high-intent pool of keywords first before you get to the low-intent keywords, especially if you want to see quick results.

Here’s one category of high-intent keywords that I’ve found very effective for our clients.

Competitor keywords.

You want to target people that are looking for alternatives to your competitor’s product or simply comparing different options.

Let’s say you have email marketing software and your biggest competitor is Mailchimp.

You can leverage this keyword strategy by ranking on Google for the following keywords:

• “Mailchimp alternatives”
• “Mailchimp review”
• “Mailchimp vs MailerLite” (and then casually mentioning your product as well)

That way, you’re targeting people who are not satisfied with Mailchimp (or have questions about it) and might be open to alternatives to switch to.

Of course, choosing the right keywords is only one part of your SEO strategy and you should not forget to optimize other parts of it as well (page load speed, technical SEO, building backlinks the right way or adding internal links to your SaaS blog).

Why is high-intent content important for your SaaS?

This type of content (when written wisely) tends to have a high conversion rate because you’re targeting people that are at the end of their customer journey and are ready to buy.

Some of the high-intent blog posts we wrote for our clients had a 10% conversion rate, which is more than other types of articles.

Just imagine if every tenth person that landed on your website bought your product!

This SaaS content strategy has the best ROI in comparison to approaches that are focusing on broader keywords based only on the search volume and keyword difficulty.

Targeting high-intent keywords means bringing not only organic traffic to your website but also qualified leads.

In this case study we explained how we generated 650 high-quality leads for our client RingBlaze with only 20 articles.

If you feel like it’s too much to handle or just need friendly advice about your SaaS content from a SaaS content strategist, let’s talk. Book a free strategy call and let’s see what we can do for you.

Five high-intent content marketing strategies

Let us share some of the practical examples of high-intent content that you can use on your SaaS blog.

Listicles

Listicles are one of the most requested types of blog posts. At first, it may seem like an easy thing to write, but if you want to position your article on Google you may need to put in some effort. The goal is to write an unbiased in-depth review of each tool and provide as many details as you can. If you need some inspiration, check out the article we’ve written for our client on “Top 10 Linkedin automation tools”.

People who are searching for this type of article are usually near the end of their buyer journey.

They’re aware that they need a tool to solve a certain problem but they’re not sure which brand to choose.

Listicles allow you to position your SaaS product in the same line as the most popular apps from your industry, to stand out and make people notice your product.

Alternatives

Make a list of your biggest competitors and then use keyword research tools to see if enough people are looking for their alternatives. If you find out that there’s a certain search volume, you’ve potentially found an ideal target audience!

Let me explain. I’ll use the example of email marketing software. Let’s imagine that you’re a brand-new name in the email marketing industry and your biggest competitor is Mailchimp.

We’d try to rank your article for the query “Mailchimp alternatives”.

Yes, search queries like this may have a lower search volume than “email marketing”. But they have a high purchase intent and that’s what we’re after here.

A person that’s looking for Mailchimp alternatives is probably already using Mailchimp and they’re not satisfied with it for some reason. They’re actively looking for better options or better value for money, whatever it may be.

That’s your chance to showcase your SaaS product and its competitive advantage and convince them to give it a try.

And the best part: there’s a high potential for you to convert them faster, without having to go into the lead nurturing process.

Comparison

A lot of people want to compare the most popular SaaS tools, just because they’re the only ones they’ve heard of. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be open to learning about other tools as well, especially if they appear in their search results.

That’s your chance to write in-depth comparisons of different SaaS tools in your industry and appear in organic search.

For example, if you sell an email marketing tool, your target keywords could be:

• “Mailchimp vs GetResponse”
• “Mailchimp vs Omnisend”
• “GetResponse vs Omnisend”

Now, you may be wondering if the world really needs another review article? Well, a high-quality comparison article is always appreciated!

Most often for vs keywords there are search results by big guys (review platforms) like Capterra, G2 and Alternativeto. The pages they have are auto-generated and the only unique content is user-generated reviews.

Yes, there may be plenty of good articles for popular vs keywords, but it’s always possible to write a better one!

On the other hand, for less popular keywords, there’s a blue ocean so you can occupy it before it’s too late.

If you write a genuine in-depth article, comparing features, pricing, integrations, who is the tool for, its pros and cons, and make a comparison table you have a high chance to position your article high on Google.

When you write a “vs” article (or “alternatives”), don’t put your competitors in a bad light, instead – describe who are they best for? There’s always the best-fitting audience for each of the tools. The tool isn’t bad or good. It’s bad for X audience and good for Y audience.

When writing about your tool speak of the features that none of the competitors have or somewhere where you are better than competitors.

For example, when I worked as a CMO at Chanty, we compared Slack and Microsoft Teams. None of the tools had the audio messages by that time and Chanty did. So we mentioned that in the article and it was driving a significant amount of sign ups our way.

Pricing

Another type of high-intent keywords are those around pricing. People that are looking for SaaS pricing plans are usually at the bottom of the sales funnel and ready to purchase.

Let’s use email marketing software as an example again.

You could write a blog post comparing different pricing plans.

This is your chance to position your SaaS product as better value for money than those of your competitors – whether you’ll emphasize its advanced features or offer a better subscription plan.

Some high purchase intent keywords would be (assuming your SaaS is an email marketing tool):

• “Mailchimp pricing”
• “Omnisend pricing”
• “MailerLite pricing”

And similar.

How-to content

How-to content is a type of product-led content that people enjoy reading. Product-led content is about helping the readers to solve their issues with your product. Your how-to articles should show them the best way to do something or solve a problem they have.

Again, if you’re an email marketing SaaS company, a good example would be an article on How to automate emails or how to send an email newsletter.

You can guide your readers step-by-step, provide a lot of free value and position your software as a logical solution to their problem.

Why create high-intent blog articles and not landing pages?

Now, you may be wondering why not bring the target audience directly to your landing page and convince them to buy the product.

The answer is simple. Our experience shows that it’s easier to rank an article for a particular keyword than try to rank a landing page for the same keyword.

It takes fewer links to get a blog article to the top compared to a landing page.

Blog articles are usually more comprehensive and they answer search intent much better.

That’s why Google likes articles and usually ranks them much higher than landing pages.

Let me illustrate this with an example.

If someone is looking for Linkedin automation tools it’s wise to give them a list to choose from (with an unbiased and honest review of the options with features and pricing) rather than one specific tool (we are talking about a homepage/landing page here of a specific SaaS product).

The click-through rate therefore for listicles would be higher compared to a landing page which is another reason blog articles rank better (CTR is one of the important ranking factors).

This is a search result for “LinkedIn automation tools”. See how the homepage of Octopus CRM is ranking #6 and all the results above are blog articles with fewer links? That’s what I’m talking about.

Another great thing about articles is that they have more text, which means you can rank one article for more keywords and get the most out of your SaaS content writing efforts!

Examples of high-intent content pieces

Here are some of the high-intent articles we’ve written for our clients that are generating dozens of leads every month.

• Listicles

We’ve written an article on the top 10 Linkedin automation tools for lead generation for our client Expandi. The article reviews all tools in depth but it helps to position Expandi as the best solution.

This article is currently ranked Google top-2 for “LinkedIn automation tools” and many other relevant keywords.

• Alternatives

We helped our client FullSession, a behavioral analytics software, to rank as the alternative to HotJar, the most popular software in this industry. We wrote an unbiased review on the top 5 HotJar alternatives, that currently ranks #1 on Google.

As you can see, we took advantage of their competitor’s popularity and used the keyword HotJar alternative to rank their software high on Google search results. If you want to see the exact strategy behind this, check out this case study where we explain in detail how we made FullSession get over 500 quality leads within 4 months and with only 16 articles.

• Product-led content

Finally, you can check out the product-led article we wrote for Pandadoc. Pandadoc is software for creating and managing online documents, and in this article, we wanted to showcase how you can use their software to write a business proposal.

We created a step-by-step guide for solving a buyers’ problem (writing a business proposal) and positioned Pandadoc as a logical solution that can help them do it.

If you are looking to spice up your content efforts with high-intent articles that instantly convert your website visitors into leads, we’re happy to help. Book a free call and let’s talk about your next steps.

Summary

If I had to sum up our high intent strategy into one advice, it’d say it’s about leveraging keyword intent.

Instead of focusing on search volume, look for keywords that show high purchase intent and target people that are ready to buy.

If you need a hand with your content strategy or content creation, book a free call and let’s see how we can work together to grow your SaaS business!

As always, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have any questions.

FAQ

What is high-intent marketing?

It’s a marketing strategy that focuses on targeting people with high purchase intent and people at the bottom of a sales funnel.

What are high-intent leads?

High-intent leads are individuals that are aware of a problem and actively looking for a solution. They show the intention to purchase your product instead of only looking for information. We can recognize them because they’re using high purchase intent keywords.

What are high-intent vs low-intent keywords?

High-intent keywords show that a person has transactional intent, they often include words like price, review, comparison, etc. Low-intent keywords are used by persons with informational intent that just want to read relevant content but are not yet ready to buy.